Microsoft has opened a new hyperscale data centre in Auckland. Photo: Supplied
Microsoft has unveiled its first hyperscale data centre in New Zealand, joining another colossal centre operated by the company CDC.
Amazon Web Services is also due to open one soon.
Their growth is partly riding on a boom in using artificial intelligence, for everything from web searches to complex modelling.
Training and using AI is an energy-hungry undertaking.
According to Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search and data centres globally are expected to more than double their power use by 2030.
Reuters recently cited Morgan Stanley research putting data centres' 2030 climate impact at about 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.
Like Microsoft, many other tech giants have ambitious goals to lower or eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions.
But they are also recording explosive growth in a world with finite renewable energy supplies.
One investigation by the Guardian found many of the big tech companies were artificially lowering their climate impacts using products called renewable energy certificates.
Other similar reports have increased the pressure for companies to show they are growing the renewable supply where they operate, enough to cover their operations and growth.
Thanks to a deal with Contact Energy, Microsoft says its new data centre at Westgate in Auckland is powered entirely by renewable electricity.
Data centres are on track to consume 4 percent of the world's electricity by 2026. Photo: 123rf
Technically the power comes from the national grid, but Microsoft NZ managing director Vanessa Sorenson says signing a 10-year supply deal with Contact two years ago gave the electricity company the certainty it needed to build a new unit at the Te Huka geothermal field. Microsoft also paid Contact $300 million to support building the geothermal facility.
Although the deal was done before the advent of ChatGPT and the subsequent AI explosion, Sorenson says Microsoft has run the numbers 30-odd years into the future and will have plenty of renewable power to back its New Zealand growth.
"In terms of the expansion we have 100 percent done those numbers," she says.
"And [Te Huka Unit 3] is going to generate 51.4MW and we don't need anywhere near that, so we'll actually be putting energy back on the grid."
Like CDC's new data centre, Microsoft's will not use water for cooling - addressing a concern with data centres overseas sucking precious water to cool their servers in regions which are already too dry.
Sorenson says the Westgate centre is the most sustainable one the company has built.
But while the new wave of New Zealand centres are selling their sustainability, the average person typing in a query to ChatGPT or some other cloud-based programme is probably not putting an energy load on a New Zealand-powered server - it is more likely in the United States.
Like the internet itself, the impacts of that energy use are global - unless a customer, such as the New Zealand government, has specifically contracted with the likes of Microsoft to have its data stored here in New Zealand.
Rebecca Mills of carbon impact consultancy the Lever Room says AI used well can slash emissions and help combat climate change.
Her company uses it for tasks such as working out how much carbon is being sucked in by the ocean, figuring out energy-saving routes, and helping companies quickly measure and shrink their greenhouse emissions.
She is keen to see the new developments built in the most sustainable way.
"For countries like New Zealand who have a good renewable energy mix then we ae at a really strategic advantage here especially if we're building that into our potential [and] planning.
"As far as the potential to unlock and help us reduce emissions, I think that could be quite significant."
Environmentalist Izzy Fenwick. Photo: Supplied/Izzy Fenwick
Not all tasks are quite so important as procuring a habitable climate.
Environmentalist Izzy Fenwick recently got a big reaction to a post on social media asking people to "please stop using ChatGPT for tasks you could simply do yourself".
She owns a software company, Futureful, helping businesspeople make more ethical decisions - and stresses she was not anti-AI, just anti-wasteful uses of it.
"Some of our sustainability challenges are so complex, it's more than the human brain can wade through. Great use. Not a great use is 'create an image of a half dog half lizard' or writing this 100-word email I can't be bothered doing myself," she says.
"One of the really interesting comments I got a lot of from that post I shared was, 'oh my god I had no idea'."
She says many of her contacts were horrified to learn how much water and energy their queries were using, when those resources could go to much more critical - even life-saving - uses.
But it is not always easy to avoid AI.
When I typed "data centre emissions" into an ordinary Google search bar to research this story, the first result was an AI generated overview from Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence chatbot - despite the query not having asked for an AI summary
It turns out AI is well aware of its own impact, or at least of the servers on which it runs.
The summary said: "Data centres contribute to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases that cause rising temperatures, more severe weather events, and sea-level rise."
User beware.
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